Ceremony//Touche pickups

From the beginning of this blog, I never wanted to stick solely to records. The main content would be records of course, but with paying some kind of attention to the design aspect of stuff; if I stumble over a cool zine, some nice merch etc. then I can always throw that in here too right? 

Over the course of this week, I am attempting to make it to 3 gigs, all of which are a decent drive away and two of which I'll be doing alone. So far I've hit 2 out of 3, and hopefully I'll be hitting up Give tomorrow. But on Sunday I saw Ceremony at the Bodega in Nottingham and here's what I managed to grab: 

09/08/2015

I think the newest Ceremony record is quite possibly their best work, and the artwork is perfect so I had to grab this shirt. 

After the gig I managed to grab a setlist too, and it's cool to see the mix of pre and post Zoo material. As much as I loved hearing the new songs live, screaming 'I Got Problems, I'm a Fucked Up Kid' is unlikely to be topped in a Ceremony Set. 

Having a quick chat with Ross from Ceremony after the gig, as I was about to leave he grabbed this from the merch table and shoved it in my hand. Super nice guy and great to talk to. I hadn't seen these anywhere before so I'm assuming they were made up for tour. 

I had bought the LP previously, but they had these tour exclusive hand drawn covers for sale. I wasn't really planning to spend £20 on an LP I already owned but the band bought blanks with them too to draw these up for anyone that bought the album which was a cool idea. I was worried about it getting creased to death in my bag, but it held up pretty well and now it's sitting with the record. 

Finally, I grabbed The L-Shaped Man on cassette. I saw a photo of these go up on Instagram and read somewhere that they were only for the record release show; so when a few floated overseas I jumped at the chance to grab one. I have no idea on pressing numbers for this one though... 

B-Side 

Fully printed J-Card, and the art contains a couple extra 'One Line Drawing' illustrations. Definitely a big fan of this artwork and the fact that hundreds of unique spins of this one album cover are floating around out there makes for something really special in my eyes. 

If you want to know how the gig was; it was great! There were a couple of dickheads spilling redstripe and trying to mosh to the slowest of songs but it can't be helped right? 

10/08/2015

Touche Amore - Nottingham Rescue Rooms 

Every time TA come to the UK, I manage to get to at least one gig and I never walk away without grabbing something so here we go: 

This shirt looked to be the most up to date design so I grabbed it. Their merch was a little sparse on this tour, and passing through Europe they managed to sell out of the To The Beat re-presses too! I still need to grab that and the purple repress of the TA/TF split to keep everything up to date. 

Finally I grabbed a pin badge of the To The Beat art, and had a nice chat with Jeremy Bolm afterwards. The venue was a little odd with a very tall stage and a barrier. Every other time I've seen them, they would jump straight off stage and on to the floor after every show to have a quick chat with fans, but it just wasn't that easy this time around. On the upside they were incredible as always, and next time they hit the UK I'll definitely be there. 

Cheers!

Can You Measure The Loss?

I always like it when a band makes a record that completely fucks with the majority of their listeners, and I particularly like sitting back and watching as everyone gets in a huge hissy fit about it. When a band goes for a radical change in sound, I always like to bear in mind that said band owe you nothing. They do not have to keep you in mind when making a record, your feelings seldom come into account in the creative process. Also, this album has been coming since Rohnert Park dropped and I couldn't be happier that it's finally here. 

Ceremony - The L-Shaped Man - Matador Records - 1st Press - Sea Foam - /? 

I haven't seen any other variant for this record yet, and I'm not sure even a standard Black copy exists? Either way this variant looks perfect next to the art so I have no complaints. It photographs up a more solid blue, but it definitely is a few shades closer to the colour of the sleeve. 

Back Cover // B-Side 

This record has a very Peter Saville // Factory Records layout to it I find, and I'm a complete sucker for that kind of thing. Heavy stock card, die cut cover, reverse colour centre labels and coloured stock on the inside sleeve are just a few of the details that I'm completely falling for here. 

I believe this is the first Ceremony full length that doesn't have some kind of photography for the main artwork, with the Line Drawing on the front cover being created by Ross Farrar. All other art and layout was a creative effort between designer Mike Zimmerman and Ceremony. Zimmerman works for the Beggars Group collective and I believe they do a bunch of work for Matador artists, alongside a few other labels. 

The L-Shaped Man 

Here you can see how the design fits into the die-cut sleeve. The sleeve kind of works with or without the illustration, and either way there is a great loneliness to this LP that I can't get enough of. There is very little about what was going on when this record was written, other than it's a 'break up' record. Up on the Ceremony webstore is a Poetry book to accompany the record that I'm tempted to buy; I really enjoyed Society Verse and this album is bloody incredible so it makes sense right? 

Lyric Sheet. 

This is the other side of the insert. Lyrics//Credits//Personnel//No Thanks. 

Stickered Sleeve 

This was another case of slowly peeling the sticker from the cellophane and hoping it doesn't rip type of deal. As there is no pressing info out there at the minute, I would love to know what 'Limited Edition' meant. I'm assuming there is at least a couple thousand of these kicking about? Either way I'm not remotely fussed, but I'm sure Matador have very different ideas of something being limited compared to your average indie label. 

Is this record a change? Definitely, and probably the most radical in the band's career thus far. But Still Nothing Moves You didn't sound like Rohnert Park either? Zoo doesn't sound like Violence Violence. Just go into this one with a fresh pair of ears and a little sense of adventure. From the moment I saw the video for The Separation I knew this record was going to be special, and Ceremony can do no wrong in my eyes. 

Cheers!

Ceremony Sunday

I ordered this pair of Ceremony items absolutely ages ago, and a big part of me thought that they would never turn up. But after a few emails back and forth, and a little patience here we have it. I've said a few times that this blog is not just for records or cassettes, but for anything musical or creative that I feel had an impact. Please bear this in mind as we go through this one! 

Ross Farrar - Society Verse - Bridge 9 Records - 2nd Edition /?

Ceremony - 6 Cover Songs - Bridge 9 Records - 1st Press - White Shell /500 

As I bought these together, it just kind of makes sense to talk about them as a package. I'll keep anything on the book short and sweet as it should be. Although to be fair there isn't an awful lot to say about the tape either. Both have some fun little quirks though! 

This is the first page of the book, and acts as an introduction to why the book itself exists. Farrar goes through his (then) recent introduction to creative writing and poetry, and this goes some way to explain the lyrical layout of some of the songs presented in this book. 

For those that don't know, Society Verse is a neat little place in which all of the lyrics (up to and including the Rohnert Park LP) are housed, often with little anecdotes and stories to further develop the content. Alongside the lyrics there is a short essay on Rohnert Park, a small collection of poems and some fairly insightful photography. Although there is no way I can convey all of that in a few photographs and paragraphs, I can guarantee you it's a great read if you're into Ceremony or any factor of their lyrical content. 

Poetry

Although the poetry section of the book is fairly short lived, it allows a little look in at how Farrar's lyrics developed over the course of writing 'Still Nothing Moves You' onwards. As the sound of Ceremony massively differs on each LP, the lyrical content also seems to be more refined. Court Day is definitely the poem I've re-read the most from the bunch.

Photography 

Vanzig. Doesn't get more real than that. I like the idea of a van that's so purpose built for tour. You could not re-integrate back into normal society driving that to and from work right? The photographs were mostly taken on tour at a guess, but it doesn't feel like a tour diary as such. More just a social commentary I guess? 

On to the musical portion of things next. 

Although I would've liked the vinyl option for this record, it seemed far easier to grab this. It was reasonably priced and from the same seller in a package with the book, and for the amount of time I normally listen to 'covers' albums this will almost definitely do. The vinyl came with a screened B-Side though... 

Anyway, all the cassettes for this pressing were on white and this is a one time pressing for cassette so I'm quite happy with this for now. My Ceremony collection is a bit weird, some stuff I own is on vinyl, some on tape and some on CD. I like to keep things as uniform as possible for the most part, so what happened there I don't know. 

Back Cover // B-Side 

As the whole EP plays on both sides of the tape, the printing on the shell is absolutely identical. It's a pretty neat little feature, and always preferred over blank shells. Sometimes I feel it's a waste of a good B-Side to do this as there is always live audio/ interviews/ demos/ B-Sides etc. but at least it's not changing over a tape 3 songs in? 

Spine View 

This really is what it says on the tin. It sounds like Ceremony, just covering other bands. They make each song stand out and make no effort to imitate anyone which is quite refreshing. Even Nimrod's Son could easily pass for a Ceremony track if you didn't know the original. 

J-Card Layout

Ceremony Covers: why Charles Mingus gets two mentions I don't know. Maybe others do too. Looking at their influences, there are a bunch of cool bands these guys are into. Imagine a cover of Seeing Other People by Belle and Sebastian? I Don't Mind If You Forget Me by Moz? Ross Farrar and Cody Sullivan tackled art direction and layout between them here, and I'm into it!

J Card Layout (Layin?) 

Not much to say about what's going on here as the stark Black and White layout makes things pretty clear. This was a fun project to pay homage to some cool bands, and nothing more. These were recorded on the same sessions as Rohnert Park. I bought a copy of that after having a CD copy for long enough, but do you really need to see a new press of an album that tons of other blogs already jumped on years ago when I should've? Probably not. This was definitely cool to write about though so cheers!